Winging it

This week, with James and myself a lot better a regular dosage of games was in store. James had only just recovered from coming off large doses of steroids and therefore didn't fancy challenging his brain to learning some of the new games I had awaiting introduction. We settled for the mind-bending, if easy to remember, Mr Jack as James had really enjoyed his last session with it.

It's not really a game that allows you to be too rusty though, especially if your opponent has had some recent games. (As I had). Therefore after the first round my detecting skills had reduced Mr Jacks alibis to three. And by round three I had him bang to rights and off to county jail along with Sally Decker.

On the return bout I managed to stubbornly keep at least four suspects in the light until the last two turns when it whittled down to two. James was stymied even further as I kept all of the other characters so far away that he couldn't even make a guess. Turn 8 finished and Mr Jack had eluded capture!

We then broke out Carcassonne : Discovery, where scores became tight right at the end but James had done enough to pip me 94 to 86.

Then to Tuesday night. After showing Paul all the new games I had we decided to play last weeks hit Thurn and Taxis. Paul was fast out the blocks again taking the first carriage cards and plopping down post offices in good strategic places. I had opted for a different tactic and began to link up some of the more tricky to get locations and generate longer connections. This paid dividends for me when by a stroke of luck I made a chain from Saltzburg to Lodz and suddenly realised I could take the top bonus for all outside territories. After that I didn't look back as Paul's routes began to look a little more meandering.

Chris - 40

Paul - 29

Although this game took longer than we thought it would we still attempted to learn a new game. Airlines Europe was given to me by my good lady wife for my birthday. A recommendation that that came from Sam (And Joe by extension).

This is an old game brushed up and made new. Designed by Alan R Moon of Ticket to Ride fame, it's a game that takes place over the skies of europe. Because of the Moon connection and the map with interconnected cities some people mistakenly believe this game to be TTR with planes. It's not like that at all. This game is all about buying more stock of an airline than your opponent and pushing up the price, hoping they don't then obtain more than you do. The map and the little planes serve nothing more than level indicators to show you how much you now have to pay for stock.

Aargh! Look at that massive hand!

There are a few similarities to TTR; like the stock deck which functions in the same way as the carriage cards, but all in all very quick to pick up and fast to play. And it needs to be because there a few stock cards to get through before the final scoring card comes up (In a Alhambra style the 3 scoring cards are placed in the deck).

The components are lovely even though I had to mark the wings of the orange planes because they looked like the red and the money was a bit thin.

We quickly ran out of time and didn't do the final scoring correctly but Paul pipped me in the end and we resolved to play it first next week.

Paul - 89

Chris - 85